Spies, superheroes, and Roman warriors had moviegoers reaching for their
wallets this summer as the year's most important season ended its run on
a slightly down note. This summer, Tom Cruise's Mission:
Impossible 2 found it not so difficult to lead all contenders
with a domestic tally of $214M and a worldwide haul of over $500M. Gladiator,
another blockbuster released in May, followed with the silver medal with
$184M stateside and over $425M globally. Looking at the period of May 5
to September 4 (Gladiator's opening
to Labor Day), North American moviegoers bought roughly 600 million tickets
spending about $3.15 billion at the box office, according to Exhibitor
Relations. That's down 4% in grosses and 7% in admissions from the corresponding
frame in 1999.

For the first time since 1991, the summer box office declined from the
previous season as higher ticket prices and more available screens failed
to boost revenue totals to a new level. But 1999 was a hard year to measure
up to with hits like Austin Powers 2
and Tarzan, surprise smashes like The
Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense,
and of course, the early summer behemoth Star
Wars Episode I. Going into the summer, the year-to-date box
office was up 10% over the previous year but that lead all but vanished
after Labor Day. Hollywood runs a product-driven industry and the films
that studios offered this summer just did not excite consumers the way
that 1999's did. Plenty of testosterone was pumped into theaters, but few
quality female-skewing movies were released hurting admissions.

Also, the films did not have much of an impact on pop culture. In addition
to raking in tons of cash, hits like Episode I,
Austin Powers, and Blair
Witch had everyone buzzing including those who rarely go out
to see movies. This year, no film really went beyond being just a box office
smash. There was no phenomenon. Ask moviegoers this Christmas which summer
movies they remember and they'll be puzzled. "No movie captured the
nation's attention like Phantom Menace
did last year which got people into the habit of moviegoing early in the
summer," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations.
Plus there were no major theme songs that defined the season like Madonna's
"Beautiful Stranger" from Austin Powers
2 or Aerosmith's "I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing" from
1998's Armageddon. MI2
and Nutty Professor II had some good
soundtrack sales, but overall it was a lame summer for retailers of companion
discs. And without Star Wars, toy and
merchandise tie-in sales were weaker too.

This summer, only MI2 managed to
gross over $200M. Last summer, both The Phantom
Menace and Austin Powers 2
achieved those heights and The Sixth Sense
eventually smashed that barrier soon after Labor Day. A dozen movies went
on to gross over $100M last summer. Once Gone
in 60 Seconds reaches nine digits, this summer's tally will
be the same. But the big difference came from midlevel performers. Seven
films reached $50-100M last summer while this year ten will finish there
meaning the wealth was spread out more.

One word to describe the summer would be predictable. Mission:
Impossible 2 became the highest-grossing film as many had projected,
and there were few major surprises. Several pictures like Gladiator,
Big Momma's House, and Chicken
Run were expected to succeed but went beyond forecasts. Others
like Dinosaur, The
Patriot, and Me, Myself, and Irene
performed below some expectations but still collected solid grosses. Scary
Movie was the only true shocker as the $19M spoof comedy sizzled
with a $42.3M opening and has grossed over $150M to date. It filled a mid-summer
young adult comedy void that Austin Powers 2,
Big Daddy, and American
Pie took advantage of last year.

The season was also inconsistent with ups and downs at every corner.
In 1996, the summer ignited with Twister,
Mission: Impossible, and ID4
but cooled off in the second half. The following year saw disappointing
results in the first half but a stellar end with Men
In Black and Air Force One.
1998 and 1999 were fairly strong through their entire four-month spans.
But in Y2K, the summer began with a powerful May with Gladiator,
Dinosaur, and MI2
leading up to a record-shattering Memorial Day weekend, despite the absence
of The Phantom Menace. Then the box
office hit the brakes in June as films failed to score huge openings and
attendance slumped. Independence Day weekend turned things around with
the one-two punch of The Perfect Storm
and The Patriot which began a record
July period. However, August saw few quality films which excited the public
and theatrical activity continually slowed down as Labor Day approached.

Summer 2000 marked a return to veteran filmmakers. In 1998, female directors
like Mimi Leder and Betty Thomas scored big hits with Deep
Impact and Doctor Dolittle
respectively. Last summer, young newcomers were all the rage as hits like
The Sixth Sense, The
Blair Witch Project, and American Pie
were all directed by relative unknowns. But this year, most of the top
films were helmed by the same older male directors who have been keeping
Hollywood busy over the last couple of decades. Ridley Scott, Wolfgang
Petersen, Roland Emmerich, John Woo, Robert Zemeckis, and Clint Eastwood
all directed big movies this summer. And minority filmmakers got to roll
the dice too. In addition to Woo's MI2,
there was Keenan Ivory Wayans' Scary Movie,
John Singleton's Shaft, Tarsem Singh's
The Cell, Joan Chen's Autumn
in New York, and Spike Lee's The Original
Kings of Comedy.

The absence of a megahit the size of Star Wars
Episode I certainly played a large part in this summer being
weaker than 1999. The Phantom Menace
made vital contributions to the record summer through both direct and indirect
ways. It donated a mammoth $421M to the box office by Labor Day, but it
also boosted everything around it. Millions of moviegoers sold out of Episode
I shows spent their dollars on other films. Plus the massive
audience it drew came in and saw trailers and posters for all the upcoming
summer product and made return trips to the cinema all season long. While
this year's equivalent, Mission: Impossible 2,
was a surefire blockbuster, it just did not have the impact on overall
moviegoing that The Phantom Menace
did.

Determining how profitable a movie is has become more difficult with
each passing year. Studios split event pictures, stars take percentages,
and enormous marketing costs are often overlooked. But if a film can generate
a domestic gross that doubles its reported negative cost, then it's certainly
off to a good start before hitting ancillary markets. Movies that fall
into that category from this summer include MI2,
X-Men, and Chicken
Run. Other moneymakers were able to generate grosses that were
four to seven times larger than their production budgets like Scary
Movie, Big Momma's House,
Road Trip, and Bring
It On. On the opposite side, big-budget bombs included Universal's
The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
and the space movies Battlefield Earth
and Titan A.E.

Family films did not have a banner season this summer as audiences virtually
ignored offerings like Rocky and Bullwinkle,
Fantasia 2000, Thomas
and the Magic Railroad, and even Titan
A.E. Disney gobbled up $136M domestically and $70M overseas
to date for the computer-animated Dinosaur which
was good but below expectations. With a mammoth production budget estimated
to be between $125M and $200M, plus tens of millions more for marketing,
Dinosaur should have performed better
especially since it touted itself as being the future of animation. By
comparison, last summer the studio released Tarzan
which eventually grossed $435M worldwide. One family film which did work
this summer was the clay-animation hit Chicken
Run from DreamWorks which has collected $104M to date becoming
the studio's highest-grossing toon. Disney's The
Kid starring Bruce Willis was a moderate hit taking in $67M
while Pokemon 2000 grossed a decent
$43M, even though it completely collapsed after its opening week.

Teen movies had mixed results with the gross-out hit Road
Trip being the valedictorian taking in $69M. After that, disappointing
sales greeted Center Stage, Boys
and Girls, Loser, and The
In Crowd. But ending the summer on a high note was the cheerleader
comedy Bring It On which nabbed the
number one spot over two consecutive weekends. Though young people are
on vacation and out seeing movies in the summer, the season saw a sharp
increase in R-rated films. In fact, eight of the eighteen weekends were
led by R pictures compared with just two from last summer.

It was a terrific summer for African-Americans in the industry, both
in front of and behind the camera. Nearly every film with a significant
black element to it was successful. Eight years after hitting the screen
in Boomerang, Eddie Murphy and Martin
Lawrence each had crossdressing comedy hits with Nutty
Professor II and Big Momma's House,
respectively, which grossed $110-120M a piece. The new remake of Shaft,
starring Samuel L. Jackson and directed by John Singleton, opened at number
one and should finish with a solid $70M. The low-budget standup comedy
film The Original Kings of Comedy became
a surprising late-summer moneymaker and Universal played up the white-black
competition angle for Bring It On which
shocked many with its strong opening. Even the summer's biggest movie,
Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible 2,
saw black actors in major roles - Thandie Newton as the leading lady and
Ving Rhames as the tech-savvy sidekick. And of course, Keenan Ivory Wayans
directed a diverse cast, including brothers Shawn and Marlon, in Scary
Movie which was aimed at a mainstream audience of teens and
young adults.

While African-American stars were flexing their muscles, women were
mostly shut out this summer. Top draws like Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Sandra
Bullock, and Ashley Judd all had films released in the spring and were
nowhere to be found during the summer months. The ladies who did have successful
films were playing second fiddle to bigger male stars like Michelle Pfeiffer
in What Lies Beneath or Angelina Jolie
in Gone in 60 Seconds. Demi Moore bombed
in the indie film Passion of Mind,
Winona Rider wilted away in Autumn in New York,
and Kim Basinger caused little commotion in I
Dreamed of Africa and Bless the Child.
And although you wouldn't know it from its title, a popular source of female
starpower this summer came from X-Men
which featured Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. Girlpower
did get stronger in August when Jennifer Lopez hit the top spot in The
Cell followed by Kirsten Dunst in Bring
It On,

Looking at studio performance, DreamWorks was the summer's standout
performer with fantastic grosses coming from a wide variety of films. Gladiator,
Road Trip, Small
Time Crooks, Chicken Run,
and What Lies Beneath should eventually
gross over $525M in combined domestic receipts. Plus, some of the films
carried modest budgets too. Studio distribution chief Jim Tharp gives much
of the credit to the talented filmmakers behind the movies, but also reflects
on the company's overall strategy. "We planted ourselves on the May
5th date with Gladiator about a year
ago after seeing the first preview," said Tharp. He added "Later
on, we knew that Mission: Impossible 2
would play like a sequel and open big on Memorial Day weekend, but had
confidence in Gladiator's staying power."

Tharp admitted that Chicken Run
was a risk since stop-animation had no successful track record at the box
office, but the studio continued to support the film which found its audience
and crossed the $100M mark. But the two biggest hits were shared with other
studios - Gladiator with Universal
and What Lies Beneath with Fox - so
global wealth will have to be shared somewhat. But DreamWorks had the most
enviable batting average around and enjoyed a much better summer than last
year when its only players were The Haunting
and The Love Letter.

As usual, Buena Vista helped itself to a large slice of the summer box
office pie but spent a ton to produce and market its slate. The distributor
opened its annual summer animated adventure a month earlier than normal
with the May 19th release of Dinosaur.
Hoping for a longer playperiod, Disney instead enjoyed stellar sales in
the first few weeks, but saw rapid erosion soon afterwards with little
strength left when kids got out of school in mid-June. Gone
in 60 Seconds reunited Nicolas Cage with producer Jerry Bruckheimer
and should surpass $100M although it was a very pricey film to bring to
market. The Kid and Coyote
Ugly both secured solid grosses but the 35mm release of Fantasia
2000 attracted few fans.

Twentieth Century Fox went into the summer with one of the most ambitious
slates and ended up with mostly positive results. X-Men
was a $75M gamble that paid off with over $153M to date. Few would have
guessed in May that the studio would do better with a Martin Lawrence comedy
than a Jim Carrey one, but that's exactly what happened. Big
Momma's House opened big and endured while Me,
Myself, and Irene debuted well but faded faster. The pair should
finish with $117M and $90M respectively. Fox's risky toon Titan
A.E. was backed by over $100M in production and marketing costs
but only grossed $23M domestically and was equally impotent overseas.

The specialized arena also suffered a year-to-year decline as widely
popular independent films were hard to find. The summer of 1999 witnessed
hits like Tea With Mussolini, The
Red Violin, Run Lola Run,
and Buena Vista Social Club collect
a combined $32M by Labor Day. This season, the best performers were Paramount
Classics' Sunshine, Shooting Gallery's
Croupier, plus spring holdovers The
Virgin Suicides and East is East
which have joined forces for a cumulative gross of just $20M. Fine Line's
Saving Grace took in an impressive
$3.7M in limited release in August but has now crossed over to the wide
release world. Of course, it won't compare to last summer's indie-turned-mainstream
hit The Blair Witch Project. Just like
megaplexes, arthouses need good product to keep themselves afloat.

So where does the box office go from here? The relatively weak August
period will provide little momentum for the fall season which puts the
pressure on the holidays to help bring activity back up again. But, next
summer is already looking like a potential gold mine. Among the movies
expected to be completed for release are Jerry Bruckheimer's Pearl
Harbor (which has claimed Memorial Day weekend), Steven Spielberg's
A.I. (set for Independence Day weekend),
Jurassic Park 3, Ali,
Rush Hour 2, Final
Fantasy, Doctor Dolittle 2,
and Disney's Atlantis. If the lineup
delivers on its promises, 1999's record could become history.